Opinion

  Xiang Junbo, the man on whose watch China’s insurance industry flourished, is now himself under investigation. As Bloomberg News reported over the weekend, China’s anti-graft agency is probing the nation’s top insurance official as the government steps up a bid to rein in financial risks. But with so many firms still hungry for returns and diversification, that shouldn’t slow ...

  The race is on. As Britain and the European Union begin to negotiate the terms of Brexit, Europe’s financial centers are jostling to lure banks, insurers and asset managers away from the City of London. When providers of goods and services compete for business it’s almost always good for their customers, and this new post-Brexit rivalry needn’t be any ...

  Is China finally making headway in its battle against currency outflows? On the surface, yes: People’s Bank of China foreign exchange reserves are effectively unchanged since December at $3 trillion, and data for February released by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed a significant narrowing of net outflows of capital based on international bank settlements and sales. That’s ...

  With a bankruptcy filing looming, the Westinghouse Electric Co. nuclear business delivered one last stinging blow to Japanese parent Toshiba Corp.’s balance sheet in February: a 712.5 billion yen ($6.4 billion) goodwill writedown. But Toshiba probably won’t be the last big company to rue overpaying for assets. The global M&A boom has left a giant footprint on corporate balance ...

  The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is due to come into effect on May 25, 2018, meaning Middle East organizations that handle the personal data of EU residents will have to be compliant. IT teams in the region have more than a year to audit their systems, check existing customer data, and ensure that processes are in ...

  As Tax Day — April 18 this year — approaches, we are confronted once again with the apparently enduring reality that Americans hate to pay taxes. Few political generalizations seem so indestructible. Gallup has long asked Americans whether their federal income taxes are too high. About 50 percent to 60 percent regularly say “yes.” The federal income tax is ...

  In the increasingly intense battle between food delivery services, it’s no longer enough just to bring the food to the customers. Now Deliveroo, the London-based startup, is moving whole kitchens to new neighborhoods to gain an edge over rivals like Uber Eats, Amazon Restaurants, and Just Eat Plc. Deliveroo, which has received $475 million in venture funding, will begin ...

  In the span of just a few days, US President Donald Trump appears to have met both his first true foreign policy crisis and his most challenging bilateral summit more smoothly than many had feared he might. Whether this turns out to be anything more than a symbolic victory, and whether it has an effect in the fight against ...

  Protests have become a staple in Venezuelan life. Venezuela, once one of the richest in Latin America, plunged into the political crisis soon after President Nicolas Maduro took the helm of the country following the death of ex-president Hugo Chavez in 2013. The latest round of protests erupted after the Supreme Court’s attempt to seize the power of the ...

  Till fairly recently, it looked like two massive new agreements would compete to define the future of world trade. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, backed by the US, would try to move the global trade architecture toward new norms, with harmonized regulations at its centre. Meanwhile, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), backed by China, would drastically reduce remaining tariffs across ...